Nefas Unleashed: Reading Sophocles in Statius’ Thebaid

Abstract The intertextual relationship between Flavian poetry and Greek literature has been of increasing scholarly interest in recent years. 1 Statius, specifically, adopted and reworked several themes which are central to Greek drama, not to mention the influence the latter exerted on his character sketching, descriptions, motifs and poetic art in general. 2